Now for more depressing NYT news...

...I found this on Twitter:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/24/education/24teachers.html


The comments are even more depressing, as they show how little comprehension is out there in the public domain.

Do you honestly think it's impossible for 1% of the NYC teachers to be incompetent?

I just don't understand what the problem is.

When people say there needs to be a better means of getting rid of bad teachers, teachers say there is a process. When the district follows a process, teachers say there aren't any bad teachers.

I don't know what those of us who are tired of uneducated kids are supposed to do.

...REALLY tired of uneducated kids.:) I've spent the last 26 years of my life trying to understand and fix that exact problem...with some success and some frustration. I do believe it is URGENT that we fix this NOW. We have no more time to wait.

I think there are two different issues here...one, getting rid of bad teachers and two, doing so in a way that is fair to good teachers caught up in the unfairness of NCLB.

I'm all for getting rid of bad teachers...how ever many NY or DC or California or Rhode Island or any place else has. I'm not doubting the numbers in the NYT article at all. And the mechanism for fairness IS broken, IMHO. NCLB added 'decimated' to the 'broken-ness.' :7

Sen. Kerry spoke on education once in South Carolina where he said we need to fix schools with a scalpel, not a sledge-hammer. I agree with him. I think Obama is trying. My biggest issue is the remedy for low performing schools...transformation, turnaround, charter, or close.

In my district, we've done transformation since 1993. It has worked in some ways and failed in others. But most of the teachers I know are committed to students, dedicated to fixing schools, hard-working, caring individuals. For those teachers to even stay in a challenged school and work to make it better...when it would be easier to go to a high AYP school...is real dedication. They should not be rewarded by being fired. That's why the 'scalpel' approach is better. NYT (and RI) seem to be using the sledge-hammer approach. I think that is wrong.

Particularly since only 3 teachers have even been fired. Anything less and it would be a needle pulling a splinter. It seems to me that there is objection to every proposal made, including for low performing schools. Those are very reasonable proposals to me, particularly the transformation and turnaround. They aren't charters, I just can't understand the objection. Especially since there is money available to do more than just penalize the school. If teachers don't like the proposals that have been made, then they have the opportunity to develop their own. It seems to me that's what teachers have been saying they wanted, a system that is bottom up, from them. If they work with the district on these proposals, that's what the solutions will be, from the teachers up.

...being targetted? Or 1% of teachers?

in its ignorant hatred of teachers.

BloomKlein are nothing short of evil.

I posted this back in March:

There was a teacher in my high school who I was fortunate enough not to ever have who was a complete incompetent boob. He sometimes came to school drunk, failed to show up for work at all on many more occasions, rarely prepared lessons, verbally abused students and basically the kids didn't learn much of anything on his watch. He was encouraged to consider retiring by the Administration, but he blew them off. As a tenured teacher with 25 years of experience, he was rather well paid with good benefits, and didn't want to give that up. Now I support teacher tenure and understand why it is necessary, but this was just flagrant abuse of the system.

My junior year the school started the process to dismiss him, and it got bogged down in a thick muck of red tape, appeals, periods of discovery, hearings, meetings and general paper pushing. It was a full three years before he was actually fired (I kept on following the case through friends of mine after I left for college). He spent another year filing subsequent appeals and lawsuits that went nowhere. The union made excuses for him at every step of the process. Amazing how intensely he fought to keep his job. Had he invested that kind of intensity on actually teaching, then things would have been different.

One of my old teachers that I still keep in touch with told me that this old fart died about three years ago still convinced that he was "railroaded".

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=5256311

It is fucking laughably easy, and districts will commit every act short of murder to get rid of a teacher it doesn't want.

I've been there. I have been fired--illegally. Don't hand me any goddamned shit it is "hard" or that a teacher deserves it. You haven't been there. I have. A teacher faces a complete stacked deck in these "due process" hearings: No witnesses allowed, perjury, subornation of perjury, falsification of documents, bribery, the whole ball of wax. And the union and its lawyers cut deals with the district to make sure a principal keeps his or her job at the expense of the teacher. This despite the fact a teacher will spend hundreds of dollars a year in union dues. That was what happened in my case.

I have NO career anymore because of what a negligent piece of shit of a principal did to me because she was pressured. See, when you're fired, you can NEVER teach again anywhere in the United States. It is serious business to fire a teacher--it is NOT like private sector work where your livelihood isn't destroyed forever. Meanwhile, this dirtbag of a principal gets to go on fancy vacations scuba diving in Hawaii and bragging about it on Facebook. This person pulls down over 100K a year in salary and benefits even though she has NO business whatsoever running a school. Not to mention she has utterly NO conscience whatsoever over what she did to me and committed perjury at my hearing--four times.

The ONLY reason firing was uncommon in the "old days" was because principals back then had ETHICS and understood that firing teachers willy-nilly would undermine staff morale and destroy kids' rights to a stable educational environment.

Principals now don't give a shit because they KNOW the district--with help from the taxpayers--will support them throughout the due process hearing garbage clear up to the Court of Appeals. Principals, unlike supervisors anywhere else in the economy, have TOTAL power over teachers and there is NO real oversight over their actions.

Education is NOT a fucking business and teachers should NOT be treated like shit. I wish people around here would get a clue and quit repeating lies from the privatizers.

especially in this forum.

Been there, done that. Everyone has had a bad teacher. BFD.

I am also willing to bet that the teachers you thought were bad others thought were wonderful. I have one student this year who tells me all the time she wishes she could get me fired. The problem is I hold her accountable. Imagine that! I have had parents call the supt and tell him I have no business in the classroom. And I have had parents call school board members and tell them I should be given a reward, that I was the best teacher their child ever had. I had a parent move so her child could be in my class. And I have had a parent ask her minister to pray me away from her son.

So please. Stop with the bad teacher stories.

tens of thousands of dollars for riggged due process hearings or hundreds of thousands of dollars in lawsuits; it is the TAXPAYERS who are footing the bill. Businesses, on the other hand, avoid lawsuits whenever possible because they can go bankrupt. School districts have almost unlimited money to fight a teacher.